


Lachrymatory

by f_m_r_l



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Gen, Great Hiatus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-09
Updated: 2011-06-09
Packaged: 2017-11-09 11:13:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/454809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/f_m_r_l/pseuds/f_m_r_l
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hiatus Fiction featuring Victorian mourning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lachrymatory

The chapel was completely packed with mourners, some in the most recent cut of clothing executed in black silk crêpe; some in cheap clothing dyed a careful black; some in garments whose dark colour might, on closer inspection, be merely an accident of time and fortune. More people crowded outside the chapel, unable to push their way in but feeling a need to be there. It made the fragrance of the flowers a mercy, the heat of the candles less so.

Watson was about to seat himself with the rest of the pallbearers when Mycroft motioned him to a side room to sit with the family, such as it was. Apparently Holmes's relatives had consisted of Mycroft and a tall, spare woman in carefully tended though not new mourning, sniffling into a black lace trimmed handkerchief behind her mourning veil. Holmes's mother, of course she must be. Or maybe an aunt? She could even be a grandmother behind that amount of mourning garb. But instead of introducing them, Mycroft nodded and went over to discuss something with the officiant.

When Watson sat down, the woman reached over to grasp him in a grip of steel, her finely shaped right hand holding his arm so tightly that her black glove strained and showed darker at the seams. She had a musician’s elegance to her hands, like Sherlock's, well formed and easily a piano octave reach or more. The woman said nothing but, after tucking her handkerchief into her sleeve, pulled a lachrymatory from her reticule and passed it to him.

The vial was somewhat spare and less ornamented than current fancy favoured, but it was beautiful and reminded him of his dear friend Holmes. He captured one tear and then another in the bottle as he thought about those even starker vials over which he and Holmes had argued so many times. Pointless, he knew now, to have attempted to deny the man his comfort. Or perhaps hope was never pointless.

Would Holmes have seen this whole ritual as pointless? Would he know what a lachrymatory was, knowledge somehow vital to one case or another, or would he have thought of it as a bit of useless trivia, as frivolous as the flourishes on a lady's handwriting? What about the songs and sermon that Watson couldn't even follow in his preoccupation? And what of the flowers?

Holmes would not have found the flowers pointless, Watson recalled, and wondered if there were any moss roses hidden amidst the masses of blossoms. He'd said that one could deduce the goodness of Providence from the beauty of flowers. But they had never really discussed what Holmes had deduced of religion other than that. Watson couldn't picture Holmes as happy in heaven, memorizing the byways of some Celestial City and bored by a general lack of criminal endeavours.

The service came to an end and Watson shuffled to his feet to continue his duties as a pallbearer. As Watson stood, Holmes's female relative pressed a cork into his hands. "Put it in a sunny windowsill, my dear Watson," the lady whispered hoarsely, "beside the knife display case." A sunny windowsill would evaporate the tears despite the cork. Watson had heard that when the tears were gone, the time for mourning was ended.

Watson appreciated the kind words and took some comfort in them. Holmes must have had more contact with his family than Watson had observed. After all, the woman knew about a display that Holmes had put together shortly before his death. It waited by the window of the guest room at Watson's home; Holmes must have shared stories of his visits.

Watson hurried home as soon as was decent after the empty coffin was interred. Mary had been too ill to attend the funeral and he wanted to be by her side. As he tucked the mourning card into his pocket, the lachrymatory came uncorked. Captured tears washed across the card, smearing to illegibility the date of Holmes's death, emptying the vial.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a conversation in the Sherlock Holmes Kink Meme chat.
> 
> Note on Lachrymatories: It's work to find authoritative sources as very many people would prefer to just believe the romantic images on faith. But here is the story of lachrymatories as I've been able to piece it together from online encyclopaedias, newspapers, and so forth. A thorough reference encyclopaedia might have helped, but I'm at home as I write this.
> 
> People examining Egyptian and Roman tombs found a plenitude of small bottles. The bottles provoked curious and fanciful speculation about what they could possibly have contained. It seized someone's imagination that these bottles or vials had held tears left by mourners, and thus the idea of the lachrymatory was born. The idea spread widely and made a poetic, macabre, and mournfully appealing story to the Victorians. (See "The Lachrymatory" by Charles Tennyson Turner. ) Later chemical analysis showed that the bottles had contained unguents and scent rather than tears. Some people will still maintain that the small bottles in the ancient tombs were for tears. But current readily available evidence doesn't support tear bottles as part of a widespread Egyptian or Roman tradition.
> 
> And the Victorian mentions of lachrymatories? I've ploughed through the newspaper archives for a multitude of newspapers. Every mention of the word 'lachrymatory' that I saw could have either been preceded by 'God's' or followed by 'of the ancients'. They loved the metaphor, but in a culture that made a passion and commerce of mourning properly and advertised extensively, I found no mention of anyone selling "lachrymatories" except as collectible antiquities. There may have been the occasional Victorian crying into a vial as Victorians were madly romantic, but current readily available evidence doesn't support the distribution and use of tear bottles as a part of a widespread Victorian practice. So it would, at least on the surface, appear that the people collecting "Victorian lachrymatories" are committing the same sort of romantic error as the Victorians who cherished "Ancient Roman lachrymatories".
> 
> But if someone had pressed a small vial into Watson's hands during a funeral he would have most likely recognized the purpose of the thing.


End file.
